Train for Power

Here are the results from a recent power assessment:

This athlete is an intermediate level lacrosse player. This athlete must improve power development in their upper-body, since their upper-body power is 30% less than their lower-body. Upper-body power is important for lacrosse for checking and battling with other players. Dead lifting power is their strength right now, which is a good base for generating powerful movements in any direction.

Through the next training block this athlete should train to increase all their power values, a smartPOWER score of 700 Watts is an appropriate goal. Some special focus on upper body power exercises is also required. Reducing that Upper / Lower ratio to under 20% is ideal.

Today we will look at how the components of power relate for a peak power weight assessment. This athlete produces their dead lifting peak power at 165 lbs. It is important to know this value if you want to optimize your athletes power training.

This graph shows the relationship between different factors in the power equation;

Notice how both acceleration and velocity are decreasing as the weight of the lift increases. Decreased acceleration and velocity results in lower power. This decrease is counter-balanced by an increasing mass on each successive lift. Remember, heavier mass leads to higher power.

Peak power training is all about playing around at the fine balance between maximized acceleration and velocity at your athletes peak power weight. If you don’t know what your athletes peak power weight is, then you are just throwing darts in the dark.

If you are serious about training your athlete to be more powerful you need to know at what weight they can produce the most power. For a given exercise an athlete will produce different power at each weight, you need to test your athlete at a variety of weights to determine exactly where their body produces peak power. A general rule of thumb would be to test between the 30%-70% RM range.

Power will be lower when they are lifting lighter than their peak power weight because the mass of the weight they are lifting is not challenging them enough. Power will be lower when they are lifting heavier than their peak power weight because the weight is too heavy for them and they can’t obtain optimal force and velocity.

Peak power weight will change throughout a training block. You want to train your athlete to be able to maintain peak power at a higher weight. If you train like this you will have conclusive proof that your athlete is more powerful and more ready for real-world sport demands.

For this post I’ll attempt to get away from the nerdy graphs and simply describe what power is. To understand power, this equation is key:

Power = Mass x Acceleration x Velocity

The following describes their relation to one another:

Mass – the heavier the mass being moved, the higher the power

Acceleration – the faster your athlete is increasing velocity of the mass, the higher the power

Velocity – the faster your athlete is moving the mass the higher the power

Putting it all together, power is essentially how good your athlete is at accelerating a mass that is already moving fast. The heavier the mass, the higher their power.

Power is vital for functional performance because in a game situation important plays happen in the blink of an eye and if your athlete isn’t trained to explode toward that fumbled ball or loose puck then you’re not doing your job as a strength and conditioning coach.

How do set concentric / eccentric lifting times help anybody perform in the real world? When was the last time a football lineman asked his opponent to push against him for 2 seconds exactly on the line of scrimmage? When was the last time two opposing hockey players agreed to chase for the loose puck in the corner for 3 seconds?

Top level performance requires fast, hard bursts of power. To train an athlete properly in a performance focused training block, forget about trying to control their lifting times; instead, have them to perform lifts as fast and powerfully as possible. This will result in the most gains for sport performance.

Below is a graph that shows concentric and eccentric lifting times from a set of bench press. I’ve also displayed power to show how it changes in this set with different lifting times: